Ana Paula Migliari / TV Brasil / EBCJoão Moreira Salles: the Institute’s initial endowment is R$20 millionAna Paula Migliari / TV Brasil / EBC
Journalist and documentary producer João Moreira Salles and Branca, his wife, announced the establishment of a private institute to support science. Institute XY (the temporary name) will operate using resources from an endowment fund through a donation of roughly R$20 million from Mr. and Mrs. Moreira Salles. João is a son of businessman and banker Walther Moreira Salles (1912-2001). Endowment funds are common financing models in countries such as the United States, and they use donations that generate income that is in turn invested in research, infrastructure and grants. Economist Rodrigo Fiães, in charge of setting up the Institute and selecting its executive director, tells Agência FAPESP that “the goal is to support research and science communication projects in mathematics and science.” The idea came about in 2010, while Salles was teaching a film course at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC/RJ). He found that in that year, PUC graduated three physicists, two mathematicians and 27 students with bachelor’s degrees in film. “The graduation rate for engineers in Brazil is lower than in China, India and Russia—the emerging countries with which we compete most,” he wrote in an article published in 2010 in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. In recent years, Salles has held meetings with researchers and visited funding agencies in Brazil, such as FAPESP, and in other countries, such as the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, searching for ideas to strengthen the Institute. XY is expected to begin operations in 2016.
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